Colin Glass checks on his grieving partner by getting into his car uninvited. Bill Goodman has been ignoring his calls and messages, so Colin makes himself impossible to ignore. In “The Deep,” the CIA Season 2 premiere, that familiar intrusion has a different purpose. Bill is back at work three weeks after his father’s death, and Colin wants contact with someone who keeps insisting he needs no help. Tom Ellis’s unconventional operative is trying to care for his friend using the tools he already has.
Bill’s repeated assurances that he is fine become less convincing as the episode proceeds. A boxing session with Stuart Scola, played by returning FBI guest John Boyd, gives him an opportunity to acknowledge his loss. Nikki checks on him too. The writing understands how someone might use routine to avoid a painful conversation, but it keeps Nick Gehlfuss’s Bill returning to the same defensive position. His distraction during the assignment makes that refusal consequential: Colin needs to know what his partner can handle. There is room here for grief to take forms beyond denial.
Giving Bill this emotional burden changes the partnership’s balance. The joint CIA/FBI task force still depends on the friction between his respect for rules and Colin’s flexible approach, but their differences now require care rather than another round of competitive banter. Season 1 gave Colin the personal upheaval through Toni Napier’s betrayal. Here, Colin says he is moving on and appears with another woman. That establishes his current attitude without settling everything Toni left behind. For this episode, however, he has someone else’s distress to notice.
The investigation gives that shift a useful companion story. Kip Paul’s murder aboard a yacht and the disappearance of his money point toward a reckoning over stolen cartel cash. Eduardo “Lalo” Cabrella, a cartel fixer, leads the team to Mitch Selby’s home, where another body and another emptied safe seem to strengthen the revenge theory. Information from Nikki’s DEA contact Deborah Fox connects the victims to an operation six years earlier. The case asks the partners to reconstruct a past its participants have reasons to misrepresent.
Misdirection means guiding our attention toward a plausible answer while preparing another. The apparent cartel retaliation supplies that first answer, but the move toward corruption within the earlier operation feels familiar rather than especially difficult to anticipate. What works better is the readable progression of evidence. Nikki’s tracking powder gets the investigators to a location; footage placing Keith Truman at a garage connected to a bomb changes him from someone needing protection into someone requiring scrutiny. These are clear changes in what the team knows. Following the investigation remains enjoyable even when getting ahead of it is fairly easy.
The garage explosion exposes a less satisfying shortcut. Bill and Colin barely escape a trap while investigating the assassin’s car, which supplies danger without doing much to distinguish their expertise. Skilled characters can be caught off guard, of course. The difficulty is that putting them within seconds of an explosion generates excitement so readily that the encounter needs something else to make their particular abilities matter. Here, the later footage does the more interesting work by making them reconsider whom they trusted.
Gary Martin’s confession gives the case the weight its reversals cannot supply alone. Played by Brian Letscher, Gary explains that the theft involved the killing of a fifteen-year-old guard. His guilt helped drive him out of the DEA, and he is prepared to go to prison. This is exposition, the information a story must communicate so we understand events. It works because the information changes our relationship with the person delivering it. Gary’s account makes the stolen money inseparable from a death, and his willingness to accept punishment gives the scene an emotional purpose beyond identifying the next suspect.
Using Gary as bait at Selby’s funeral then tests that willingness through action. The vehicle attack afterward puts him in danger because he has agreed to cooperate. I appreciated that the episode keeps his admission attached to an ongoing choice. Regret does not finish his involvement. The funeral also places Bill’s distraction in a setting already charged with death, letting his private loss affect an assignment without pretending he has processed it.
The assassin’s escape is less rewarding. Felix Vincente, played by Sasha Roiz, carries a reputation built partly on killing CIA operatives. After the attack, Bill pursues him to a bridge, where he jumps; the episode later establishes his survival. Keith’s arrest with the stolen cash closes the immediate investigation while Vincente remains available for future trouble. That is functional television construction, but the jump makes his eventual survival easy to expect. Keeping a dangerous character in play is a practical benefit, not much of a surprise.
Bill’s family mystery has a similar familiarity. A travel record connecting Robert Goodman to Tbilisi in 1998 contradicts what his son understood about his history. Colin’s search of agency records reveals that Robert worked for the CIA, during a period Nikki describes as troubled. The discovery changes the questions Bill must ask about his father without establishing what Robert actually did. It also repeats part of the Toni story’s mechanism: a loved one had a concealed connection to the agency. Moving that secret from Colin’s relationship to Bill’s family does not automatically reinvent it.
Colin’s response gives the revelation its strongest dramatic value. He tells Bill what he has found and offers to investigate with him. Suspense can survive that honesty because the operation remains unexplained; the script does not need Colin to manufacture another problem by hiding the discovery. After spending the episode trying to get Bill to speak openly, he makes openness possible from his own side. Bill now has to reconsider a father he cannot question, with Colin willing to help him examine the records.
CIA Season 2 premiered on CBS on October 5, 2026. The action-packed procedural drama follows the unorthodox cooperation between a rule-breaking CIA case officer and a by-the-book FBI agent as they handle high-level domestic and international threats.
Where to Watch CIA Season 2 Online
Full Credits
Title: CIA Season 2
Distributor: CBS, Paramount+
Release date: October 5, 2026
Rating: TV-14
Running time: 43 minutes per episode
Director: Ken Girotti
Writers: Dick Wolf, David Hudgins, Nicole Perlman, David Chasteen, Warren Leight
Producers and Executive Producers: Dick Wolf, Mike Weiss, Nicole Perlman, Peter Jankowski, Anastasia Puglisi, David Chasteen, Paul Cabbad, Ken Girotti
Cast: Tom Ellis, Nick Gehlfuss, Natalee Linez, Necar Zadegan, Angela Sarafyan, John Boyd, Jeremy Sisto
Director of Photography (Cinematographer): Jonathan Beattie
Editors: Megan D’Arco
Composer: Atli Örvarsson
The Review
CIA Season 2
“The Deep” makes a familiar procedural worth following through Bill and Colin’s changing partnership. Gary’s confession gives the case human consequences, while Colin’s honesty strengthens the family mystery’s emotional foundation. The investigation is easy to anticipate, the assassin’s escape offers little surprise, and Bill’s grief leans heavily on denial. This premiere earns interest in the partners without yet earning much excitement about its mysteries.
PROS
- Colin’s care gives the partnership new emotional weight.
- Clear clues make the investigation easy to follow.
- Gary’s confession connects information with accountability.
- Colin shares his discovery instead of manufacturing distrust.
CONS
- Predictable investigative reversals.
- Familiar assassin and family-secret hooks.
- Garage trap underuses the partners’ expertise.
- Bill’s grief relies too heavily on denial.
